Peter Francis, former police officer, has argued for the fake names of undercover officers to be published.
Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

A former undercover police officer who has become a whistleblower has joined a boycott of a public inquiry into the covert infiltration of political groups, saying it was concealing the state’s misconduct.

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But he said Mitting had accepted on many occasions applications from undercover officers to have their identities concealed “wholesale, with minimal, obfuscatory or no reasoning provided at all”. He added that he did not want to spend more public money submitting arguments that were unlikely to change Mitting’s approach.

“Without meaningful disclosure, neither I nor, more importantly perhaps, the victims of undercover policing will be able to properly question the evidence put forward by the police officers during the evidential stage of the inquiry.

“This is crucially important, particularly when the inquiry must remember that these former police officers have been trained to lie. It was a fundamental part of their job.

“Without cover names being released, so many victims of undercover policing will never even know they were targeted. Such an outcome is the very opposite of the professed aim of the inquiry, which is primarily to establish the truth.”

The latest hearing, on Wednesday, lasted six minutes as neither the victims, nor Francis, were present in the courtroom to oppose the latest tranche of applications from the police. There was a protest outside.

The victims and Francis have not taken the decision to abandon the inquiry completely.